


Gallipoli

by Neyasochi



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut ensue, M/M, Post-Fall of Overwatch, Reaper doesn't know that Soldier is Jack, Reunion time, Soldier doesn't know that Reaper is Gabriel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 03:12:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7342345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyasochi/pseuds/Neyasochi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reaper and Soldier: 76 share all the same old haunts. Crossing paths was an inevitability.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gallipoli

At Overwatch’s height, the Watchpoints had dotted the world over. Nations had not only welcomed their presence in the wake of the Omnic Crisis-- they had petitioned them with offerings of land and resources for construction, vying amongst each other to become one of the first countries to house an anchor Watchpoint. The regional stability offered by each stronghold encouraged the UN to build more, with auxiliary Watchpoints cropping up in lands plagued by natural disaster, terrorism, simmering wars, violent persecution, civil unrest. Their advances in scientific research, disaster rescue, and reconstruction helped raise the global standard of living dramatically, and the environmental and lifesaving initiatives they pioneered took steps to ensure protection for the world and its most disadvantaged inhabitants.

To the public of the time, the Watchpoints symbolized hope; to Soldier: 76 and other Overwatch agents, they had also been far more. _Home_.

They sit empty now, behemoth and hollow, lifeless without the agents and crew that had once been housed within, even for just a short tour or two. This particular Watchpoint had a longer, richer history than most.

Before Overwatch’s official formation, there had only been a handful of UN-selected operatives shuttling from crisis to crisis, targeting omniums in lightning strikes before retaliation could return in full. They hadn’t had high-tech bastions yet-- only moderately reinforced safehouses that the UN could arrange for them quickly and quietly. Places where they could hole up in between attacks or while waiting for extraction, or get emergency medical treatment and a quick meal.

His memories here overlap: some from this tenuous period of their youth, waging a full-scale war with just a small band of soldiers and living in the breaths in between battle, and some from the many years that stretched out afterward, when the modest safehouse was later converted to a full-fledged Watchpoint and stationed with agents and staff year-round. They are as embedded in the walls of this place as the extensive wiring is, every room and hall containing a web of old memories that trail after Soldier: 76 like clinging threads.

_This was where he broke his arm and swore off tequila-- for maybe a month. Ana drew hearts and unicorns all over his cast while he slept it off. Lucky for him it healed up in a week._

_I’d make him hot chocolate in this kitchen whenever he had nightmares. We’d stand here and talk for hours before going back to bed._

_This is where we first kissed, in this spot, still covered in ash and still-sticky blood. He said he’d wanted to since day thirty-eight of the enhancement program._

This Watchpoint is no different from the others he has visited in the hopes of uncovering further details of Overwatch’s massive failure, in that it bears too much personal history to let him pass through unaffected. He is accompanied by ghosts as he retraces steps he took a lifetime ago, down stairways and hallways that will never again bustle as they did at the organization’s height. But… a lot of things will never be as they were then. Probably for the best.

The air here used to smell of the warm sea, of salt and sun. Now he thinks it mostly smells of rust and mildew and creeping decay. He’s grateful for his mask when he sees the heavy stirrings of dust catch on rays of sunlight. It’s thick enough for someone to choke on. The air intake filters will handle it for now, but he’ll need to take the entire apparatus apart for cleaning later on.

Soldier goes to the main data bank first and manages to coax the generators into powering up, their fans whirring heavily and blasting plumes of dust into the room. He isn’t surprised to find that everything has been wiped clean-- that’s been the norm thus far. Most of the information he’s successfully obtained has been through paper records that were misplaced, forgotten, wound up in the wrong hands; physical copies are harder to track down and disappear entirely, capable of surviving purges that digital records cannot.

He hunts through the steel cabinets next and tries not to think of how many times he had perched himself on top of them and distracted Gabriel from filing something highly classified and important. But he remembers it too well: the heels of his boots thudding noisily against the thin, flimsy metal as the Blackwatch commander eased between his legs to kiss him, paperwork temporarily set aside and possibly forgotten. It wasn’t anything close to his intent, but Soldier flushes hot behind his mask as he realizes that he was probably responsible for at least a portion of the misfiled documents that he has managed to find thus far.

He grunts and slams the last cabinet shut before moving on to the barracks. Gabriel had always kept personal quarters-- as suited a commanding officer-- both during and after the Crisis. The man had always had a reputation for being extremely private and openly hostile to any suggestion of sharing a room outside of missions. Jack had been the exception to the rule.

For his part, Jack Morrison never much minded where he slept at all. He had grown up an only child on an isolated farm on the fringes of a small Indiana town. The packed, close quarters during his basic training had been an exciting change of pace, and he had never lost his liking for the camaraderie and companionship he found living in the barracks. Even after his promotion, he’d kept using his simple bunk and its corresponding locker until he was eventually pressured to better reflect the image of Strike Commander. The UN suits that directed Overwatch had contended that while his simple tastes were good for morale, they were bad for appearances.

He’d ended up spending half his time in the barracks anyway, and the staff never re-assigned his beds or lockers, leaving his name stamped in the dormitories of just about every Watchpoint around the world.

Soldier: 76 paces through one such barracks that holds over a dozen twin beds, their mattresses blanketed in dust, his steps heavy and measured. Posters still hang on the walls, peeling at the corners, faded by age and what faint sunlight found its way through the narrow windows near the ceiling. As a young man, he’d decorated walls like these in Watchpoints around the globe, taping up tattered pictures of his parents, the farm, and their aged golden retriever, as well as the cheesily sincere inspirational posters they’d sent his way. Gabriel had teased him about said posters back when they’d bunked together during the soldier enhancement program, and complained often that he couldn’t sleep with the eyes of so many baby animals boring into him.

He scans the lockers lining the wall opposite the beds, the dingy grey-white and steel all tinged orange by his visor. The names are all too familiar: Nielsen, Taro, Nichols, Amari, Gonzalez, Baptiste, on and on… Most of them are dead, he already knows. He’d either witnessed them killed in battle or read their names in newspaper headlines and obituaries in the years since. The rest have scattered to the winds, presumably doing a better job of making a life post-Overwatch than he is.

He finds the locker labeled MORRISON and brushes gloved fingers against the sturdy metal, leaving behind faint marks in the generous coating of dust. The combination is the same one he’s used since the soldier enhancement program, back when he and Gabriel had shared a single locker between them. It’s terrible for security, but he did used to be such a sentimental idiot.

Soldier grunts as he pulls the locker open, the hinges stiff and protesting after years of disuse. It’s mostly cobwebs and dust, with a spare sock curled in the corner and a lone strawberry candy sitting forlornly on a shelf. He isn’t sure quite what he was expecting to find-- he’d always been good about packing up his few pictures and possessions for every transfer, apparently minus a sock or two. None of his designated lockers or quarters at other Watchpoints had held anything of worth, either.

From the barracks, he retreads a path he knows well enough to walk with his eyes shut. He did so on more than one occasion, he recalls, stumbling half-asleep in the dead of night to or from Gabriel’s room, eyes shut against the harsh industrial lighting in the hallways.

His boots scuff the linoleum as he stops in front of a door, plain as any other, with a stenciled spray of an alphanumeric designation and the Blackwatch symbol that Gabriel had designed himself. Gabriel had liked that this room was secluded but central, just a minute’s run from just about anywhere in the Watchpoint that he really needed to be.

Soldier has to force the door open, as this entire wing looks like it’s been cut from power since the UN’s official shuttering of all Watchpoints almost two years ago, after the ordnance and much of the tech and supplies had been stripped out and repurposed elsewhere. He’s had to scavenge what little he’s found, vulture-like as he picks through the remains of what he’d once considered his and Gabriel’s legacy; the pickings are slim, and why he’s had to make do with commandeered conventional weapons and the rare, slim pulse pistol he recovered back in Watchpoint: Capetown.

The metal door groans against its track in protest, the metallic squealing coming a hair too close to the shriek of omnics being taken apart by a grav canon. The jam would probably have been more of a problem for a non-biologically enhanced individual, but for someone like him it’s only a matter of actually putting his back into it. He’s getting a twinge at the base of his spine by time the door finally gives way and slides into the wall with a final, piercing cry.

His family was never much for religion of any kind, unlike Gabriel’s, but Soldier has a good sense of what a holy place should feel like. It’s like this: solemn and dusty, empty, but with the sense that it once housed something awe-inspiring. Also, this: he feels unworthy standing here, no offering to give that would purchase him welcome or belonging.

He treads on dusty ground, afraid at first of touching anything. But curiosity-- morbid and wistful-- spurns him to peek in drawers and cabinets, filled with nervous energy over what he may find. He grunts softly, surprised, when he finds pictures nestled in the drawer of the nightstand, tucked underneath a notepad covered in Gabriel’s usual doodles and scribbles. The photos are mostly of his mother and sisters, with one or two that include his late father surrounded by the Reyes children.

Jack features in one of the shots, standing at Gabriel’s side, their arms slung around each other. It looks like one that Ana probably herded them into, judging by Gabriel’s sharp-eyed glare at the camera even as he squeezes Jack’s hip and hugs him close. It’s almost certainly too affectionate to have wound up on any of the old official Overwatch social media feeds, but he has no doubt that Ana’s husband had this one squirreled away with other casual and candid pictures of the agents. Probably for some party slideshow that never got made.

He’s surprised to see that a copy of his formal military portrait-- something Gabriel must’ve gotten from his personnel file, because it would never have occurred to Jack to gift it to him-- has made the cut, too. He’s unsmiling, and he remembers that much being a struggle; the photographer had repeatedly chastised him for breaking into a grin, which had only made it harder for him to bite back his laughter, of course. His neck and jaw are a little thicker than in the high school graduation photo taken just a few years prior, his angles sharper from training and the various biological agents he received during the program. He’s clean-shaven, his golden hair carefully parted and gelled into place, all its unruly tufts and spikes temporarily tamed. The white collar of his dress uniform sits tight around his throat, the deep navy of his jacket set boldly against the American flag draped in the background.

 _It’s not bad_ , Soldier supposes, but he’d only seen the official portrait as something that he could send to his parents and other relatives-- or as something that might flicker across screens and holo-displays across the world in the event he was captured or killed in the line of duty. Nothing more than that. He wonders what it was about the picture that appealed to Gabriel, then closes off that line of thinking with another: he’ll never know what Gabe thought of it, or why, and it hardly matters anymore. Gabriel is gone and so is Jack, mostly.

The picture is soft and worn around the edges, creased like it’s been folded a few times. It doesn’t look like it’s ever been crumpled in a fit of rage, at least, and that gives him reassurance and guilt in equal measure. The uncomfortable blend reminds him of how the enhancement program’s doctor-scientists used to give them bio-injections paired with strong doses of painkillers, the combination leaving the both of them wracked and muddled, buoyed only by the other’s presence.

A plume of dust billows out around him, spore-like, as he settles on the bed to sift through the rest of the pictures. He spent at least six Christmases with the Reyes family (Thanksgivings they shared with his parents, but they and Gabriel never took to each other quite as well) and he can still pick them all out by name, despite the many years since his last visit: Mrs. Reyes, Maricella, Dariana, Elena, Ximena. They’re fairly recent, maybe only five or six years past. He thinks he saw one of Daria’s books on display in a storefront he passed a few weeks back, actually. He wonders how Maricella’s restaurant and her famed omnic sous chef are faring; last he’d heard, she was gunning for a Michelin star.

He tucks the pictures into his pack, careful not to bend or crease them, and then searches through the other drawers and storage places in the room. He finds a pair of gloves wedged between the bedframe and the nightstand; the burned butt of one of Jesse’s cigars in a corner; a stash of old hot sauce and soy packets, ferreted away like Gabriel always liked to do; a slim file containing information on a number of old Blackwatch sting operations. Funnily enough, it’s the damn soy sauce that catches him off guard, the thought of Gabriel rounding up the extra packets after the two of them ate takeout in his room making his chest ache like he’s taken a round straight to the chestplate.

Gabriel’s bed still has its sheets and a thick comforter, dusty and probably moth eaten, but certainly offering more comfort than anywhere Soldier has slept during weeks of trekking, hunting, and fighting. He hesitates a long, drawn moment before peeling back the comforter-- which he really won’t need, as he’d never minded the cold near as much as Gabriel did-- and resting a knee onto the mattress.

It creaks noisily, and he’s surprised it can even manage to squeal louder as he settles the rest of his considerably dense weight onto it. He doesn’t bother removing his mask or gear. He sets his pistol on the bed beside him, within arm’s reach, and curls on his side, facing the jammed open doorway.

It’s impossible not to feel the gnawing sense of lack while lying here, where he spent a hundred nights tangled around Gabriel, pillowed on his chest, or clasped between his thighs. The pang of missing him lances through his gut whenever he finds himself just on the verge of sleep-- his mind wonders, sleep weary and confused, why there is no heat at his back, no steamy breath huffing slowly against the crook of his neck, no hands tucked into the waistband of his sweats to keep warm and sleepily stroke the trail of fine, golden hair underneath, and jolts him back into a pitiable, wakeful state.

It’s almost agony. Talon has nothing in their toolkits that could duplicate the plummeting misery he feels each time he catches himself expecting Gabriel’s touch, his smell, his voice. But it’s the hazy, half-asleep moments just before he remembers that keep him tethered to the bed, willing to be haunted-- brief snippets of bliss where Soldier imagines that Gabriel is padding back from the bathroom and will slip his arms around him when he crawls back under the covers, or he’s just returning late from a mission or meeting and will fall into bed beside him with his uniform still on.

When he wakes to another day, it’s with the bleary and sore realization that he is still alone, still aching, and still far from well-rested.

Soldier: 76 crisscrosses continents a few more times, mostly hunting after the people responsible for tearing apart Overwatch from within, but taking time here and there to eradicate gangs and investigate tangential threats like Lumerico and Vishkar. The conspiracy to sabotage Overwatch stretches even further than Gabriel Reyes had tried to warn him, and he can’t help but think of how much quicker this business would go if he only had his old partner at his side.

He finds himself favoring that that same Watchpoint, returning time and again, joining the ghosts of his past for another wearisome night’s rest. He’s disappointed to realize he’s gone and gotten attached again, as if he can afford it. But it seems like a good safe haven-- though one thick with memories that snag and prick him like knotted coils of barbed wire-- and he often needs its refuge whenever he kicks the hornets’ nest a bit too hard.

He hates how much of a relief it is to collapse onto the bed in this room, sometimes after crawling the last thirty, forty feet through the base. Hates how easily he can conjure up Gabriel’s scent, convincing himself that he smells anise and coconut while the cracks in his bones seal and his flesh knits back together with dark seams of scarring. Hates how shitty he feels for finding solace in anything to do with Gabriel when he spent the last four years of his previous life so deeply at odds with the man that they barely even spoke.

These are his weakest moments, left alone with his regrets and the things that reside under the hardened shell of himself that he’s made to deal with the rest of this world. He’s almost grateful that Gabriel isn’t alive to see him like this.

When he takes a run at a new Vishkar development going up in Plovdiv and the whole thing goes sideways, Soldier at least manages to make his way back to the abandoned Watchpoint to lie low until the mess blows over. He huffs raggedly behind his mask as he cuts across the hangar, speed finally beginning to flag after hours of booking it across shadow-strewn terrain. It’s only once he’s slowed that he begins to feel the strain in his muscles and the probable bruised ribs. He gives himself a cursory self-exam as he half-jogs through the halls and finds he’s still mostly intact.

He doesn’t sweat the parts of him that aren’t. They’ll heal. The pain will pass.

And he’ll be home again soon enough.

 

* * *

 

This was his room, once; one room of many he’d claimed, scattered in Watchpoints and Blackwatch safe houses on six continents, but it had always ranked among his favorites. The surrounding land was beautiful, even after the ravages of the Omnic Uprising, and the local markets had no shortage of fresh produce and unfamiliar ingredients to test in the kitchen.  His quarters here were basically ideal-- quiet, low traffic, and never too cold. Not that the cold means anything to him _now_.

But judging by the state of affairs, his private quarters aren’t so private anymore. His is the only room in this dump that isn’t caked with dust and matted cobwebs. The bed’s been slept in recently. A picture of him—old him, him before the explosion, him before Angela did whatever it is she did—and his sister, Maricella, is propped up on the nightstand.

Odd. Irritating. He plucks up the photo and studies it, still considering whether to rip it into pieces when he hears the approach of heavy, hasty footsteps. They’re uneven but certain, headed to a destination they know well.

It’s curious enough to give him pause. His fingers are already curled around the grips of his guns, the steel claws studding his gloves scraping softly on gunmetal, but he waits a tick just to see who the hell is striding into his old room like they own the place.

“You don’t belong here,” he growls at the interloper, who immediately draws back out of sight-- good reflexes, though they won’t compensate for his costly lapse in awareness and whatever injury has him favoring his left leg. All he caught was a glimpse, but Reaper instantly recognizes him from a few botched missions as that nuisance, Soldier: 76.

“You’re the one that doesn’t belong, Reaper,” the man snaps back, that disgustingly righteous edge in his voice setting Reaper’s nerves on fire. When Soldier carefully rounds the doorway this time, it’s with an oversized pulse pistol in hand, a finger resting lightly over the trigger. “Not on this planet, and certainly not in this room.”

“Oh?” the hooded figure asks, mocking, as he wonders what information of value could have brought the idiot vigilante here. Why he’s taken to holing up in _this_ room, of all the ones that sit unused in this miserable scrapheap. He angles his head pointedly toward Soldier’s handgun-- it’s not conventional, the faint green-blue glow seeping through black casing marking it as a pulse weapon. “And what are you going to do about it with that kid’s toy?”

He already feels himself fading at the edges, his extremities dissipating into a thin, gritty smoke. He drifts toward the intruder, grunting softly when the delicate snub nose of the pistol presses against his chest. It’ll sting like a bitch if he _does_ fire, but Reaper has survived far worse. And he has to give the boy scout credit for standing his ground; most people he gets this close to have already pissed themselves. “Bullets go right through me. Remember?”

“Maybe so. But it didn’t look like they went through _painlessly_ back in Prague,” Soldier says, voice as rough as the jab of his gun into Reaper’s flexible chest armor, which would be burned through with a point-blank shot from any pulse weapon. They were made to sear through omnic armor, after all. “Why don’t you poof into a smoke bomb and slither off back to hell before I send you there myself? There’s nothing for you here, monster.”

“I don’t know, Soldier,” he rumbles, hating the new timbre of his voice but enjoying the effect it has on people: they tense, panic. He imagines the man’s pupils shrinking behind his hideous visor, tight with fear of an inhuman and shadowy thing like himself. “I don’t think Gabriel Reyes would--”

“Don’t say his name,” Soldier growls, deep as a junkyard rottweiler, lunging forward inhumanly quick and thrusting his pistol up underneath Reaper’s jaw. “Don’t you say it. I’ll pin your tongue to the roof of your mouth before I let the likes of you breathe a word about him,” he threatens, following through on his words by driving the muzzle of his pistol up harder under the mercenary’s chin.

“You knew him, did you?” Doubtful. His smoky, incorporeal hand reforms around the grip of one of his shotguns, the ashy particles drawing back together into tight cords of muscle under dark leather and flex-armor. Soldier is so riled that he doesn’t seem to notice.

“I knew him better than _anyone_ , yeah,” Soldier roars from behind that ridiculous mask, his grip on Reaper’s overcoat twisting and tightening. “I loved him better than anyone and hurt him better than anyone. This is the most of him I’ve been able to find anywhere in the world,” he hisses venomously, “and I’m not about to let a worthless dreg like you ruin it. You don’t have to die, but you _do_ have to leave. _Now_.”

Reaper is silent, still, breathless. Soldier is breathing heavily enough for the both of them, his outrage an almost tangible thing, its presence almost enough to count as a third entity. Almost as powerful is the sense of hesitation that clings to Soldier, so strong that Reaper can practically taste it-- though he lost most of that sense when he died. This room has become like a shrine maintained by a lone hermit: hallowed ground, a refuge in the arms of an unseen presence.

It is almost laughable that the dogged vigilante that has given Talon-- and Reaper, personally-- such a headache is _soft_ in this manner: sentimental, attached, clinging desperately to some memory that should no longer bear weight. Soldier should know better than to indulge such affection for the remnants of someone he loved. It’s an infirmity, and it could be the death of this man that stands here, confronting him with fatigued muscles and a trifling sidearm. It _would_ be, certainly, if Reaper wasn’t similarly afflicted.

It’s awkward to speak with the nose of the pistol pressed painfully under his jaw, but Reaper manages. The words come slow and hazy at first, but each piece he recalls infuses his faded memory with more certainty. They shared everything, once. That included: a room, a bed, a locker. “Seventy-six… eighteen… thirty-three.”

He lifts his chin a hair at the sudden flux of pressure on the trigger as the vigilante’s finger spasms around it. A solid hit, then.

“The mind holds on to useless things, doesn’t it?” he presses while Soldier is stricken, lost. Reaper himself is remembering the way that locker had smelled: of strawberry candy and aloe vera aftershave, and sometimes shoe polish and the turpentine that he had used to make watercolors out of colored pencil.

“You-- that’s-- how do you know that?” Soldier asks between ragged breaths, the bitter-edged frustration in his tone coming up just shy of masking his confusion.

“The same way I know who you are underneath that mask. Same way I know the enhancement therapy gave you dry skin and migraines, on top of everything else.” He watches Soldier stiffen from head to toe, drawing back in his shock. It’s cruel to keep going, and so Reaper does. The more he speaks, the more he recalls: the first time in over a decade, some of it. “It’s how I know you’re allergic to capers, and you have a scar on the back of your knee from being an idiot during basic. Most of your scars are from being an idiot, actually. Like the one on your heel.”

“No,” Soldier protests in dazed disbelief, voice weak and wavering even as his grip on Reaper tightens to the point that the leather bunched in his fists rips at the seams.

“I know that you bargained with them, made them give me Blackwatch before you’d agree to the promotion. Told them you could only tolerate a black ops faction within Overwatch if it was under my command. But I didn’t learn that until recently,” he admits, thinking of the desperate, sobbing admissions of UN suits as he _interrogated_ them in the wake of Overwatch’s fall and Jack’s death. “You hate ‘extra stuff’ in your ice cream. You’re not above poking through other people’s sketchbooks when they’re away on missions. And you think you can trust the people pulling your strings. Or at least you used to.”

Soldier-- _Jack_ , he corrects internally, although old and broken in ways he wasn’t before the fall-- is best described as shell-shocked. He’s disarmed and defeated, and Reaper never even needed a weapon to make it so. He is trembling as he withdraws from the mercenary, handgun clattering to the floor as he struggles to keep his knees locked and his body upright. “You’re not… you aren’t him. I saw him die.”

“You’re not wrong,” Reaper replies, watching through the dark sockets of his mask as Jack fumbles with his visor, then pries the faceplate away and takes desperate, engulfing breaths.

Jack looks… Age has certainly caught up with him. His handsome features remain for the most part, though stricken with deep scars that look as though they date back to that night at the Swiss HQ. But gone is his youthful energy and glowing, boundless warmth that drew people to him like ants to honey. The boyish charm that clung to him well into his late thirties has finally faded in its entirety, revealing a grizzled old soldier underneath. He is dimmed and drawn, whittled down into a skeletal warrior animated by purpose alone; perhaps as much of a husk of his former self as Reaper is.

“I didn’t think you’d be here,” Reaper tells him. _Because I thought you were dead, too_ , he doesn’t say. “You always said you wanted us to retire in Grand Mesa.”

He cannot fully discern what Jack is feeling, but he knows that he just delivered him a crippling, finishing blow.

Jack slumps to the floor on his knees, curls over like an omnic powering down, his broad shoulders shaking and shuddering. His hair is still tufted and wild, though bone-white and receding, with dried blood matted along the curve of his right ear. He fights for some long moments to steady his breathing and doesn’t come anywhere close to succeeding.

“How could he become you?” he croaks, his hands drawing into fists that strain against the fabric of his gloves. “He couldn’t… You can’t be. No, no, I don’t…”

“You still have doubts,” Reaper says in answer, open in his disappointment. _He_ doesn’t. He feels far more than his usual controlled fury: grief, longing, and pain of the emotional variety twist at his insides, wearing at the bedrock of hate and hunger that has kept him sane and stable for the last three years. He is inexplicably drawn to comfort this man that has sabotaged his missions and shot him straight through the knee on two separate occasions; he’s compelled to protect the very cause of his current agony. He wants to kiss him as much as he wants to choke him.

It’s _definitely_ Jack Morrison.

“Let me remove them for you,” he very nearly drawls.

Reaper’s steps are slow and deliberately loud as he crosses the room to Jack, who remains curled in a sad, defeated hunch; his white-crowned head is bowed like he’s awaiting judgment. _And he might be_ , Reaper concludes when Jack offers no protest at all to his advance. He’s never seen the man so emotionally wracked, not even during their final confrontation in Switzerland, when everything-- Jack included-- had begun to unravel.

Reaper kneels just behind him, long overcoat pooling on the floor around him like an oil slick, one clawed hand reaching out to lay flat against Jack’s bent back. He feels the man stiffen under all those layers of garish, aged leather and body armor, and then exhale for a long eight second count-- like he used to on rough nights during the enhancement program, his hand clamped around Gabriel’s with the vise-like pressure of an omnic’s grip. His fingers follow the ridge of Jack’s spine, slow and firm, down to the dip of his lower back. His hand fits _so well_ here. Like he remembers. Jack must remember, too.

He glides his hand back up the man’s side, passing over kidney and rib, and then snakes it around to his front. Treated and colored leather sits zippered tight over the thin polymer-plate armor that covers his chest, and flex-armor certainly wraps him underneath even that. Even so, Reaper can feel how much of Jack is unchanged. The vigilante soldier is trim and taut, still dense with their particular variety of enriched muscle from the enhancement program’s therapy; Jack is still broad in the same places, still tapered in others, his shape familiar and complimentary to Reaper’s own. He does worry, slightly, that Jack might be slipping underweight for their breed of soldier-- perhaps run too haggard or too short of good rations to support their considerable bulk and metabolism.

Jack finally reacts as Reaper coaxes him to sit up on his knees: a low, pleased grunt. Expectant. Encouraging. Like this is what he was hoping for but didn’t dare ask. A one-sided exercise in trust, maybe. He lets himself be guided, positioned, drawn back against Reaper’s chest, but shudders at the mercenary’s perpetual chill.

Reaper presses close-- close enough to hear Jack’s pulse racing, to smell the sweat beginning to dampen his skin, to feel his body tensing and flexing in response to his touch. He’s sorely tempted to rip through every layer that separates him from that blushing skin, once sun-kissed but now ashen; he wants to tear off his owl-faced mask, press his mouth to Jack’s throat, and feel that throbbing heartbeat through his tongue.

But he settles for this, which is good and familiar: one hand undoing Jack’s pants while the other holds him tight, flush against his front. The only space between them is from the waist down-- a narrow sliver that Reaper maintains to keep him concentrated on the task before him. It’s still a challenge, with so much of Jack so close. So, so easy to lose himself in the other man. Like always.

The breadth of Jack is constrained firmly between Reaper’s biceps, and slivers of the bare skin on his upper arms brush against the warmed-through leather of Soldier’s jacket. The rest of him isn’t so fortunate: his lips meet only the chill inner surface of his deathly veneer; his gloved hands know the broad planes and curves of Jack’s body but miss the tactile sensations of mixed fabrics, fine hair, goose-pimpled skin; the bridge of his mask is buried in that white, feathery hair instead of his flesh and bone nose. Still... there is no more visceral comfort than filling himself with the sight of yellow-gold-- or white, as it’s now become-- and the saccharine scent of Jack’s marshmallow shampoo bars, which his mind must be dredging up from old memories. After all, _he_ was the one who had bought them for Jack and had them shipped from the States at exorbitant rates, since the farmer’s boy could never be bothered to buy anything more than cheap, generic soap. He’d liked the way they had made his boyfriend smell as sweet as he looked, how soft they made his unruly hair.

His vein-burning urge to devour anything living shrinks in the company of these affection-drenched memories, these decades-old inclinations to nurture and pleasure this one person above all others. But it doesn’t quite vanish. The hunger is pure self-preservation, really, and it finds some current of possessive lust and aligns itself to that, coloring his passion dark and red.

His clawed hand inches its way up to cup the over the hollow at the base of Jack’s neck, gifting him a soft gasp from the man who leans into him like he _wants_ to be swallowed up.  His teeth are only an inch from Jack’s delicate nape, his soft throat, the tender spots under his jaw and at the crook of his neck. It would be easy-- _so easy_ \-- to rip him open and drink him up. He decides then, with resolution and disappointment both, that the mask is as much for Jack’s welfare as it is for his own. At least until his hunger is safely sated elsewhere.

Jack’s thighs are splayed open, his knees spread apart on the tile floor in a wide arc. His whole body is arched, drawn tight as a bow, wearied muscles quivering with the exertion. Moaning softly. Trembling against him in anticipation.

A light caress with a claw-tipped thumb informs Reaper that Jack is already hard and straining to be released from the flimsy confines of his underwear. Jack is murmuring low and swift, an endless stream of praise and pleading that grinds like silky fine gravel against Reaper’s ears: _please, yes, yes, Gabriel, you know me, you’ve always known me so well, please, like we used to do_.

It works. Reaper takes him in hand after just a moment’s deliberation, the action causing such a seizing in his gut that he worries the earth has opened beneath him to really and truly swallow him into hell this time.

But he hears Jack sigh and murmur gratefully, his head lolling back on Reaper’s shoulder, stubble-lined throat bent and bared, and it feels like heaven instead. He’s drowned in relief when Jack doesn’t soften at his touch, doesn’t shrink away from his deadened chill or the perpetual reek of smoke that clings to his bruised and blotchy skin. A thrilling pleasure races along his veins, then sinks into him, settling deep; it leaves him feeling warm for the first time in years, if only in mind.

Reaper strokes him like he used to, with his chin hooked over his soldier’s shoulder, cheek pressed against the side of his neck, nosing at his jaw. But he cannot tease at Jack’s ear or line the pronounced curve of his jaw with kisses as he once did; the pointed, skeletal tip of his mask juts hard against Jack’s clavicle now, and it is smooth, unfeeling polymer composite that presses against flushed, five-o’clock shadowed skin.

Still-- still, he can close his eyes and imagine, for brief moments, that it’s twenty, thirty years ago, and Jack’s snuck into his room late because he knows the passcode and never hesitates to use it. Like they’re young again, desperate to seize any quiet moment for themselves before omnics or something ruin it one way or another. Like maybe all the shit that’s soured the last two decades didn’t actually happen.

Reaper didn’t realize how much he missed him. But then... he’d thought Jack was dead all this time, and it’s far easier to bury the memory of someone not living. Now Jack has gone and risen out of the carefully compartmentalized coffin he’d been interred in among Reaper’s memories, returning like a savior that the mercenary had neither known to expect nor to want for. But having him now, so near that he can smell the rich and tart odor of his dried blood, the cheap aftershave he’s been using, the coffee on his breath…

“Gabe,” Jack murmurs between shallow breaths, the words rousing Reaper quicker than any touch ever could. “Gabe, Gabe…”

He squeezes Jack closer and rolls his thumb around the head of his cock, bringing a desperate groan to the man’s lips. The black leather of his glove bears a sheen of wet, sticky precum that he works over Jack’s skin, all slick and gleaming. Jack arches into the touch, his strong body quivering in Reaper’s embrace; he is still all firm muscle underneath the worn clothes he wears, and still eager to take charge when it suits him.

Reaper keeps his grip fixed and movements steady, even as Jack curls his hand around his own and tries to force a change of pace. He finds himself chuckling, deep and throaty, against the curve of the man’s ear.

Jack reaches back and searches blindly with his other hand, his sweaty palm skidding down Reaper’s outer-thigh before planting there and squeezing forcefully. He is still whispering that name as he pushes back against the mercenary: _Gabe, Gabe, Gabe_. The hand cupping Reaper’s thigh refuses to allow him an inch of retreat as Jack tugs the other man close and rolls his hips back in one fluid movement, grinding himself against Reaper’s front.

“Please, Gabe,” Jack grits out when Reaper tries to pull back and gain the distance to keep a clear head. “Gabe, let me feel you.”

Jack is the only one who has ever called him that. The only one that Gabriel ever _allowed_ to: curled together in their tiny room in that secure, nondescript facility in Maine, their twin beds pushed together as they tried to sleep off the latest round of injections. It was the first time that Jack called him that and Gabriel didn’t snap to correct him; it was the first time he found he didn’t mind it. _Liked_ it, even, when it was coming from Jack’s lips, off his tongue… and it rolls off of his tongue now, over and over, intoned like a half-formed prayer.

Gabriel is reluctant to let go, but it is maddening to resist Jack’s will. The younger man has always been impatient, proactive, never one to sit passive for long; he has no mercy on Gabriel, canting his hips back against the mercenary’s like he’s determined to make him come first. Gabriel knows he probably is. He knows this arouses Jack, always has: pushing back to feel the firm, insistent press of his commander’s bulge against the seam of his pants, running along the cleft of his ass; knowing that it is confined, aching, seeking his attention and his warmth.

Contact with Jack is _good_ , maybe even better than he remembers, though that may just be due to the long drought of human contact he’s suffered. He pushes his hips forward-- slow at first, then in a stuttering rhythm that meets Jack’s enthusiastic writhing halfway. It takes no time at all for the feel of Jack pressed against him to work him into a thoughtless, panting mess. Gabriel’s pleasure is sharp and all consuming: in between two of Jack’s gasped, strangled cries of his name, it seizes him by the gut, sinks hooks in deep, and wrenches from him a hitched noise of satisfaction that resides somewhere between a gasp and a moan.

Gabriel folds over Jack, enveloping him completely as he draws him to his climax, too; they slump forward together, Jack pressing the heels of his palms into the floor to brace the both of them as Gabriel’s handiwork grows fevered and unremittingly ardent. It only takes another few slippery strokes, which Reaper metes out while breathing raggedly against the crook of Jack’s neck.

Jack is open-mouthed but silent as he comes on hands and knees, spilling out in Reaper’s hand and dripping onto the floor. The most he manages is a near inaudible sigh, and then a shaky breath as he slumps back against the man he’d once thought he’d marry. He is still panting and fresh from orgasm when he labors to speak.

“Your mask, Gabe,” he whispers in between breaths. He is exhausted, worked over, voice thin and gravelly even as he pleads; he angles himself awkwardly in Reaper’s loose embrace, intent on facing him. “Gabe, please, I need to see you.”

Reaper is firm but gentle as he runs the back of a gloved hand down Jack’s exposed face; the silver claws that adorn the knuckles stroke down over scars and stubble, brush tenderly over flushed, pink-stained cheeks. They gleam brighter with his sweat. “No, Jack.”

“I want this to be real,” he’s muttering, leaning into Gabriel’s cold touch. His pants are still undone, messy, his eyes half-lidded with soporific satisfaction. Unwound. On the verge of drowsing, maybe. He doesn’t seem to mind when Reaper wipes away the worst of the sticky mess coating his left hand with the corner of the nearby bedsheet. “I need it. Please, Gabe. For me?”

“Don’t pout,” Reaper growls, and he is struck with an overpowering pang of déjà vu. How many times has this sort of exchange played out between them? Enough that this almost feels rote.

Jack draws his lower lip back in as a leather-clad thumb brushes gently over the thin, chapped skin. He’s eye-level now with the dark pits in Reaper’s skeletal mask, and his pale gaze bores straight into them as Reaper takes each of his hands into his own.

He peels off Jack’s gloves, revealing strong hands that are going veiny and knotted in the joints; dotted by the odd freckle here and there. They’re starkly pale against the black material Reaper wears, and still prone to the occasional faint tremor-- though now he suspects it is something other than shock and horror rippling through the soldier.

Reaper briefly releases Jack so that he can adjust the protective headgear that rests under his hood. The lock points around his jaw release with a soft hiss of pressurized air, and he works the mask loose enough that he can feel cool, unfiltered air seep through the narrow gap to tickle at his skin. He takes Jack’s hands again, thumbs stroking across the bridges of his knuckles, and lifts them to his throat, tucking them just under his jaw.

Jack hesitates at first, uncertain until Reaper exhales a, “Go on.” His blunt-nailed fingers move lightly over the woven flex-armor that wraps his throat. His touch is tender as his hands rove forward, under Reaper’s chin, ghosting over the spot where less than an hour ago he aimed his pistol.

Jack gasps softly as he works his fingers through the narrow opening in Reaper’s mask, the bare pads finding rough skin and wiry bristles of a short beard, the pits and ridges of scars. His digits roam under the faceplate, reading everything that he cannot lay his eyes upon through touch instead.

Reaper lets his eyes slip shut when he feels Jack against his lips. The callouses that line each of the man’s fingers drag across his skin, feather-light but perfectly rough. There is nothing worth thinking of in the current moment except for the careful, exploratory touch that makes him tingle all over.

Jack follows the outline of his lips, perhaps comparing them to his mental approximation of Gabriel Reyes, before that explosion in Zurich; he lingers over the missing slivers of flesh, the familiar scars left by whizzing, searing shrapnel of omnic warfare. He studies the new scars even longer, those ones he only saw fresh and bloodied in the wake of the explosion.

“Doesn’t seem fair that you get to see mine and I don’t get to see yours,” Jack says after another few minutes of quiet searching. He half-smiles, though, not apparently too vexed by Reaper’s reluctance to show his face.

“Yours is a lot better looking than mine now,” Reaper replies, low and relaxed. He can practically hear the satiation in his voice and knows Jack can, too. He feels like one of those videos of a crocodile or a tiger letting itself be petted, soothed. Temporarily docile. He cocks his head to the side as he reaches out to touch that heartrendingly familiar face; he cups Jack’s chin in his clean hand, clawed thumb affectionately stroking over short grey stubble.

He's a sappy mess after sex, as per fucking usual.

“‘Now’?” Jack asks, eyebrows arching questioningly. “Try _always_.”

Reaper shrugs before easing away from Jack just enough to stand. He can tell the other man isn’t pleased about the sudden separation, but he’s ready to properly clean the mess off of his hand-- and himself-- before it dries. “Nah. But you get to be the pretty one from here on out,” he teases as he begins to search the adjoining bathroom. “Only fair.”

Jack hmphs in response, still sitting on the floor and wearing something that borders on a smile.

“I miss your old visor,” Reaper comments after cleaning himself up with a tattered towel and an unopened water bottle found in the bathroom. That one was small, tasteful, and didn’t obscure Jack’s eyes. He considers ‘accidentally’ stepping on the hideous visor where it lay on the floor, weighing potential outcomes of this act of cosmetic vigilantism.

“Me too,” Jack sighs, interrupting Reaper mid-dilemma, “but I need this one.”

“Need it?” He leans against the bookcase and crosses his arms, head angled skeptically. He notes that Jack’s pants are still unzipped and open, as is his jacket.

“If I want to hit anything more than ten feet away,” he complains. “By the way, I can’t tell if you’re doing that crazy smoke thing right now or if I need to see an optometrist again--”

“Shit,” Gabriel hisses low, brow furrowing behind the protection of his mask. He lifts a hand and sticks up three of his claw-studded fingers. “How many?”

“How many what?” Jack asks, squinting as he looks at a point on the wall just a few feet behind Reaper.

“You’re fucking with me.”

“I wish,” Jack says, grinning lopsided. “I mean, I am a _little_. I did see three fingers. They just looked more like... six tubular blobs.” He sobers a little as he adds, “I’m not a young man anymore, Gabe. Hell, I’d qualify for AARP now if I wasn’t legally dead. Same goes for you, I guess.”

Reaper groans when he realizes it’s absolutely true-- they’ve both gotten fucking old, against all odds. He trails off into silence when he considers another uncomfortable truth: Jack continues to age, but Reaper does not. In the three years that he has been standing still, Jack has been sprinting forward; he is now almost as old as Gabriel was when he died.

“I visited your grave, you know,” he says, trying to avert his thoughts from worries that he isn’t yet prepared to confront-- Jack aging without him, growing weak and shriveled.

“To piss on it?” Jack asks without waiting a beat, so quiet that Reaper almost misses it.

He laughs, and it’s the first time in years he’s done so without the prompting of bloodshed or destruction. He’d brought flowers, actually-- marigolds and sunflowers and daffodils that popped with color even in the wan moonlight. He had crushed them in hand long before he’d finally managed to find Jack’s flat headstone among the neat cemetery rows of Arlington, though. “I don’t really do that anymore. Piss.”

Jack grunts in reply. “Really? I feel like all I ever do now is take breaks to piss. Getting old is even shittier than we thought it would be.”

“Well.” Reaper pauses, hanging onto a thought: them curled in a hammock on Jack’s family’s farm late in summer, during one of their extended vacations after the tumult of the Omnic Crisis and Jack’s promotion, speculating on how they would grow old as supersoldiers. “ _I_ was always pretty realistic. You thought you’d be like Captain America forever, but without needing the ice.”

Jack hums softly, cornflower-blue eyes shut, not disagreeing. “Realistic? More like pessimistic. And yeah. I was a little full of myself.”

“A little,” Reaper echoes, amusement coloring the rumble of his voice. He’s more grateful than ever for his mask, skeletal and owl-like, which keeps his accompanying smile hidden; it also conceals the hungry lick of his teeth, the wrinkling of his nose as Jack’s scent and his warmth steadily fill the bedroom.

He hasn’t fed in more than a day, and no other humans are wandering these halls to dull the hunger that keeps him regenerating. Jack is perfect prey right now, and there is a strong and sizeable part of Reaper that is currently dwelling on how good it would feel to take him there on the floor, vengeance and sustenance all knotted together. He could steal back the significant portion of himself that resides in Jack, as it has for decades, and maybe feel whole again. He could kill him for days, drawing the life out of him a mouthful at a time. He imagines tasting something for the first time since this cursed, unwanted second life began: because Jack is special, and if anyone could revive that deadened sense, it would be him.

The hunger for Jack dwells not in his gut but in the marrow of his bones. Its cry isn’t easy to stifle, but Reaper has grown in patience and cool detachment since the fall, and he tamps down on the yearning for death and offers up a substitute to the hungry, thirsty thing that has resided in him ever since his resurrection: Jack alive and in his arms, reclaimed one ‘little death’ at a time; Jack’s apology and his forgiveness, his understanding, his affection renewed; Jack’s voice, gruff with age and disillusionment, softened as he murmurs Reaper’s old name; Jack’s acceptance of—no, his _longing_ for Reaper’s touch.

Those things will sustain him better than simple death, which is plentiful and can be purchased elsewhere. The self-made bargain quiets the part of him that urges him to reap for a while longer.

“I visited yours,” Jack says after half a minute or more of almost-comfortable silence.

His words jolt Reaper back to his present company. “Mine?” he asks, cocking his head.

“Yeah,” Jack drawls out, scarred brow furrowing. “You really didn’t go back to L.A.? Never? Not even to see your mom and Daria--”

“Didn’t want to see them,” he growls, a plume of shadow suddenly pooling around him, unbidden. If Jack is startled by it, he hides it well. “Didn’t want them to see _me_.”

“Of course,” Jack rushes to agree. “Of course. I’m sorry,” he sighs, suddenly looking exhausted. “That’s-- I’m sorry, Gabe. About everything. But especially that night, I--”

“I’d rather just hear you say I was right,” Reaper cuts in, voice dry. He’s calm again, despite the topic, which flatly subverts everything he’d expected to feel at this hypothetical moment: confronting the ghost of Jack over the end of it all, heaving up his hurt at the erosion of their trust at his feet.

The old soldier is lost for words for a few moments, before huffing softly and nodding. “You were. You were right. The corruption was worse than I was ever willing to acknowledge. I was… afraid to, Gabe. I was scared to peel back that veneer and see how rotted the thing we made had become. I was afraid of what that would mean for Overwatch and all the good things we did. I thought I could handle it internally. And I got played.”

The admission doesn’t instantly set everything right. Reaper doesn’t know why he thought it would, because it isn’t anything he didn’t already know.

That had been the worst part of it, actually, on that night in the Swiss HQ: seeing Jack’s realization and heartbreak, the moment in which he understood how many lies he’d been fed by Talon infiltrators and UN officials alike.

“Well,” the mercenary sighs, “we both did. Or else we both wouldn’t have followed the breadcrumbs to Zurich like fucking morons. So there’s that.”

“Why would you work with them?” Jack asks, only the barest edge of a growl in his voice. His hands are idle in his lap, but Reaper can tell he wants to be picking at something, or maybe cleaning his pistol. “After what they did to us? Did they do something to you, Gabe? Like Lacroix--”

“No.” Reaper grunts low behind his mask. He realizes he is wringing his hands, the leather making soft little squeaks. He stops by clenching them into fists instead. “No, Jack. I just... didn’t see the point. They’re everywhere, Jack, and what more could they do to me? They’d already won. It was hard to hold onto my old convictions after everything I fought for literally blew up in my face.”

“But your family, Gabe. _Both_ of your families. Jesse, Reinhardt, Angela--”

“Don’t talk to me about them,” he hisses through his mask. “Don’t. I just…” He growls like some hellhound in lieu of the fitting words that won’t come. How can he explain how empty he felt after that? A husk, loveless and scapegoated and tormented. Any purpose seemed better than wallowing in that, and freelancing for Talon is surely not any worse than dedicating his life and career to an organization that rotted around him and then trapped him and the people closest to him under its bloated, dying corpse. “Doesn’t really help that I came back as a monster, either, does it?”

“Gabriel,” Jack says, sharp, cautionary. He’d used that tone whenever he thought Gabriel was being too hard on the new recruits, not understanding that the Blackwatch commander already harbored suspicions about the loyalties of the best and brightest that Overwatch was inducting.

“Isn’t that what you called me earlier? _Monster_?” He lifts his chin as he lowers himself down to take a seat on the floor beside the bed, taunting the other man to try and deny it.

The set of Jack’s jaw betrays his guilt, a quick bite down that makes the muscles under his ear flex visibly. He tongues the inside of his cheek a while before speaking; an old habit, one that Reaper used to tease by cupping under that chiseled jaw and squeezing the smooth-shaven planes of Jack’s cheeks. “In my defense, you have been doing monstrous things. Assassinating World Food Programme officials? Sabotaging humanitarian aid projects? Christ, Gabe. But you’re right, and I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you behind the mask, doing the exact things we were supposed to fight against.”

“Does it being me make a difference? Really?” He can barely bite back another laugh-- this one sarcastic and scathing.

Jack’s lips thin in a stern frown, his gaze direct and defiant. “You know it does, Gabe.”

“Didn’t make a difference when I was the one that told you that Overwatch was riddled with Talon agents. Or that they were setting me up and poisoning everyone against Blackwatch.”

“Don’t,” Jack grunts. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I’m sorry that I let everything go to shit, that I disappointed you. I am. I have been every day since. But don’t sit there and act like you weren’t doing shady shit with Blackwatch behind my back and lying to me about it. And don’t try and say you never gave me cause to doubt you. I regret a lot of things I did and didn’t do as Strike Commander, and quieting up your stings gone awry and missing arms shipments and AWOL agents is right up there with the rest of it. And I did that shit for _you_ , Gabriel. I wouldn’t have for anyone else.”

Reaper holds his tongue in check as Jack exhales, his jaw still tense, throat working as he struggles to bring up the next string of words. His gaze shifts down to his lap as he prepares for the words he knows are coming next.

“I’d never have believed you could turn on us,” Jack continues, choked into a hard whisper by barely restrained emotion, “if it hadn’t been for all the lies and secrets you _did_ spin around me. Remember all those? The fucked up things you _were_ responsible for? The shit I had to learn about from Ana and Jesse and goddamn _leaks_?”

“It was covert ops, Jack--”

“That doesn’t mean you sneak around your commanding officer--”

“I didn’t want you involved, _pendejo_. The whole point was to keep you and Overwatch clean! But hey, maybe all this would’ve been a non-issue if you hadn’t accepted a promotion over your CO in the first place,” Reaper snaps, earning him an exasperated laugh from the other man.

“ _There_ it is,” Jack says with a sharp, irritated nod that prickles the skin under Reaper’s coat. He lets his head tip back against the wall, throat bowed and exposed. “You’re still pissed about that, huh?”

“Yes. Still.”

“At me? I thought you said you found out what they told me in the negotiations.”

“Yes. Still,” Reaper repeats, blunt. To be leapt over for a promotion by a subordinate was embarrassing enough; to be blindsided by his lover, confidant, protector, too? Gabriel had carried grudges against middle school locker-thieves and no less than six asshole neighbors all the way to the grave. It only makes sense that a betrayal at the hands of his most trusted friend lasts beyond that.

He isn’t irrational, though. Time, affection, hindsight, and a cooler head have tempered the hurt enough that he can see how Jack thought he was doing the best thing for the both of them. “But I know that wasn’t your fault. I’d served my purpose to the UN. Good enough to get my hands dirty in the field during the war, but not to lead during the peace that I helped win. Should’ve expected it, honestly. Even if it wasn’t you, Jack, it was _never_ going to be me. Doesn’t mean I can’t still be pissed about it, though.”

“Fair enough,” Jack agrees, patting his hands on his knees. “At the risk of showing my age,” he continues, visibly hesitant, “it was almost thirty years ago, Gabe. I think you have plenty more recent things to be pissed about. I’d almost suggest trying to work past it, actually, but anger seems to be integral to...”

Reaper laughs as Jack gestures to him-- all of him, head to toe-- the sound distorted by his mask. “Well. It’s what gets me up in the morning,” he grumbles, his faint chuckle turning into a weak cough. “Gets me through the day.”

“That bad?” Jack asks, concern lacing the two simple words so sincerely that Reaper has to look away from his softly creased eyes and the slight part of his frowning lips.

“Not right now. I’m fine. Which is... I didn’t even know I could feel fine anymore, to be honest,” Reaper says, working out a kink in his neck even as he pushes down another hunger pang that whispers at the basest part of his brain.

“I’m glad you still can,” Jack says, soft and fond-- the voice saved for when they were alone, cleaving to one another in the dark of night. “Can I sit by you?”

“You want to?”

“What I really want to do is sleep with you,” he says, unabashedly honest. “Or on your shoulder. Anything. But just being next to you would be great. If I wasn’t sore as hell and already on the verge of a total shutdown, I’d be wrapped around you like Fareeha used to do. Remember?”

“Little Leech,” he snorts, the nickname intended with mostly affection. He thinks of the times they used to babysit Fareeha for Ana and her husband; the little girl that had scaled the Watchpoint like a jungle gym and begged them to play soldier was now grown, and no longer playing. She wouldn’t even recognize him now, or her uncle Jack.

He shifts a little to accommodate Jack scooching across the floor to settle beside him, their backs braced by the storage drawers underneath the bed. Reaper stretches his legs out alongside Jack’s and lets his boot knock into the other man’s foot, receiving a playful glare in return.

Jack busies himself cleaning his pulse pistol, having finally collected it from the floor. He takes it apart and lets the pieces sit between his thighs on the floor in a jumbled pile, checking over each component before rebuilding it into a working handgun.

Reaper thinks he must be thinking, because Jack’s tongue is hardly ever idle while his hands work. A secondary thought: that flimsy little pistol is ridiculous in Jack’s hands, ill-suited for the vigilante soldier. He must be aching for his old heavy pulse rifle, which is almost certainly sitting locked up in some high-security UN research lab or a well-guarded, locked-down Watchpoint.

Pulse weaponry was their experimental tech, meant to provide the chassis-shredding performance of heavy artillery in a smaller, more compact form. And it had worked: the pulse guns were perfect for shredding omnics and almost anything else, but only in the hands of individuals strong enough to carry them-- supersoldiers, almost exclusively. Even the smallest pulse pistol weighed too much for most unenhanced individuals to wield effectively for any serious length of time, and the prototype heavy pulse rifle could break toes if dropped carelessly.

The things Jack used to do with that prototype… there was a time in which Gabriel had never felt safer than with Jack covering him, that oversized rifle sweeping side to side as he cleared their flanks and watched his commander’s back. He’d spin at Jack’s warning sounding in his ear-- _Gabe, watch your six! And your eight! Five, also. Your entire backside, basically_ \-- and have the privilege of watching his lover riddle the tin cans with headshots, the pulse rounds ripping smoking holes in their circuitry. The good old days.

It didn’t hurt that Jack looked damned good lining up down its sights, either, his strong farmer’s hands firm and certain as he wielded that sixty-pound beast like an air rifle. Gabriel used to watch him on the practice range, biting his lip until it blanched and bruised as Jack reamed scores of practice bots with arresting competency.

And Jack would look up at the reinforced glass of the viewing gallery when he was done and smirk, knowing who was watching. He’d salute Gabriel’s way, blow him kisses, pump his fist in an embarrassing display of victory. He’d sling his rifle over one broadly muscled shoulder and look up at Gabriel, pleased to do him proud.

Reaper resolves then and there to _reacquire_ the prototype-- for Jack’s sake, of course. The sooner the better.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” Jack mumbles as he lays his head on Reaper’s shoulder, his pistol now tucked in a holster that’s slung up on the nightstand. He inhales deeply, contentedly, apparently undeterred by the acrid, bonfire scent that clings to Reaper. “Really glad.”

“But considering I’m _not_ \--”

“You’re breathing, aren’t you?” the old soldier interrupts. He spreads his hand across Reaper’s abdomen, atop the armor and fabric that rise and fall with deep, silent breaths. “Your heart’s beating. Maybe all this dead stuff is in your head?”

“Jack,” he says, gentle. “You were there. What do you think?”

Jack doesn’t answer. He busies himself with touching Reaper, tracing his fingers along the patterns of his chest armor, slipping his hand just under the plate to be felt through the thin, flexible material underneath. His eyebrows-- still their familiar warm brown, only speckled with grey here and there-- draw inward and make thin creases along his forehead. The rest of his features pinch tight: lips pulled in between his teeth, the corners of his eyes tinged red.

“How bad was it?” Reaper asks. He has an idea, based on the wide ribbons of scar tissue that ring his reanimated body-- he struggles not to think of it as his corpse, even now-- and the pinched, shiny, discolored swaths of seared skin that pattern his left side.

Jack shakes his head and grimaces, refusing to answer at first. “I saw… I don’t know if you remember or not, but at the last moment you pushed me down and covered me. Saved me. I tried to save you, too, Gabe. I tried to resuscitate you until the fracture in my arm broke through the skin,” he says, unshed tears welling along his lower lashes. “And then for a little while longer. You were unresponsive, and I knew just… medically, you couldn’t be alive.”

“But finding out that you’re _you_ ,” he continues, voice thick with emotion as he strokes along the sharp curves of Reaper’s mask, “terrified me. I thought I’d made another mistake, worse than anything before. That maybe I left you there alive. Put you right in their hands.”

“You didn’t,” he assures Jack.

“I knew they would come to make sure the job was done. I ran to avenge us both later. I promised that I would find the people responsible and kill them myself. It was all I could do, I thought.”

His heartbeat never speeds or slows, now maintained by something unnatural and unmoved by human feeling, but Reaper swears he feels the phantom of a jolt in his chest. He is overwhelmed by shades of his old pride in Jack, who he thinks is best like this: fighting a cause in the field, fiercely devoted to the people he cares for, a ruthless protector when it comes down to it. It’s how things should have been, always.

“Angela… I saw that she tried to resuscitate you afterward. In the coroner’s report. She tried something new, Gabriel. It didn’t work, or at least she didn’t think so--”

“I imagine she wouldn’t be proud of the results. I didn’t turn out as well as her last project,” Reaper very nearly spits, skin prickling at the turn in conversation, “but we can’t all be like her beloved tin can. Small miracles, I guess,” he adds, flexing his fingers and thinking of the mottled skin underneath, bruised and greying and decaying; the steady pain of his body dying, regenerating, dying, regenerating; the ache to feed. “I’d have hated to come back as a bucket of bolts like the runt.”

He appreciates Jack’s knowing quiet and his soothing touch, his naked fingers winding their way along Reaper’s black-clad ones. He imagines Jack thinks he can be saved; probably is thinking right now of how he can sway Reaper back to his side, how to convince him to turn himself back over to Mercy for further experimentation in the guise of a cure. She’s cured him enough, as far as he is concerned.

And he thinks that Jack might reconsider when he learns of the extent of his condition-- the need for consumed life, the primal and self-preserving hunger that necessitates killing. Jack may not be as naïve and hopeful as he once was, but he surely won’t abide a creature that kills and feeds on humans just to keep living.

“Do you have plans?” Jack asks. He’s leaning heavier on Reaper’s side, pressing against his flank like he hopes to stick. He’s breathing deep, trying to ward off a yawn.

The mercenary peels back his sleeve and consults the commlink strapped to his wrist. “I have a hit in Istanbul in a few hours. I could still make it. Tight, though.”

Jack hums thoughtfully. “Mmm. Not gonna let you do that.”

“Not much different than what I did in Blackwatch sometimes,” Reaper shrugs, “and this guy’s no angel. But you’re welcome to try and stop me. Been a while since we had a good spar.”

“A spar,” Jack echoes, faintly incredulous. “Maybe in the morning? I haven’t slept in like thirty hours.”

“Right,” he drawls. “It’s after eleven and you’re not in bed yet. Must be killing you.”

“Shut up, Gabriel. How many times did I have to pry you from the bed in the morning? Slept like a fucking bear,” he mutters, and Reaper has to laugh at the man’s irritable teasing. “Do you still do that? Sleep?” the soldier asks softly.

Reaper clears his throat as he stands and then offers a hand to Jack. “Some. Never well.”

“This is your room,” Jack says as he rises up from the floor, his hand tight around Reaper’s. “And your bed, so of course you should feel welcome to it,” he adds, glancing down at the double that can barely fit the both of them and its rumpled sheets. “I’ve, uh, been staying here sometimes,” he explains, a hand ruffling his hair nervously.

“I noticed.”

“I’m gonna sleep,” he says, turning his back on Reaper as he begins to unbuckle belts and holsters and ration packs. “I’d like you to stay with me, at least for the night. I get it if you don’t want to, though.”

Jack doesn’t say anything else, leaving the air heavy with some hopeful expectation of an answer. He doesn’t turn back around, either: perhaps to give Reaper an easy out, if he so chooses, or just to spare himself the sight of his lover leaving.

Reaper has to hold in a sigh at the sight of him slipping off that jacket and peeling out of the underlying armor: broad of shoulder and trim of waist, flecked with scars and dappled with bruises. Jack is bare and vulnerable when he slips under the covers and curls up.

“I’d just make you cold, Jack.”

Jack shrugs. “Never bothered me, remember? We worked together for so long because I never minded that you always stole all the blankets.”

“You don’t want to see what I have under wraps. Trust me.”

Jack bites his lower lip. “Okay. Keep everything on, then. I don’t care so long as you’re here. I like your coat, by the way. Looks sort of, uh, familiar. But I thought long, billowy, dramatic overcoats were, quote, _a liability and a clear sign of bad taste_. End quote.”

“Shut the hell up, Morrison,” he huffs as he throws back his hood and slides the thick, dark leather from his shoulders. He catches Jack eyeing the coat as he drapes it over the back of the desk chair. “Don’t you think about stealing it.”

“Not my color,” Jack yawns, his whole back arching up off the bed. “And didn’t you notice I’m doing a new, casual look now? It ought to look familiar… dark uniform pants, lots of straps and belts, cool jacket thrown over body armor? Think Independence Day themed Gabriel Reyes. Just give me a beanie.”

“You need one,” Reaper whispers as he climbs onto the bed, reaching to tap gently on Jack’s forehead. “Fivehead.”

“Too far,” Jack says, laughing and rubbing at tired eyes. He drapes his forearm over his head to hide his receding hairline. “Too far, Gabe. I’m old. Let me be.”

“Not that old,” Reaper says as he settles down on the mattress behind the other man. He huffs deliberately against Jack’s nape, feeling the shudder that travels through him. “I’m like four years older than you, asshole.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Jack murmurs sleepily. His hand sneaks back to feel at the body spooning his, running down Reaper’s hip and resting on his thigh. “Feels like you could still crush me with these.”

He’s not wrong.

“You’re not wrong,” Reaper intones. “So be good, Jack,” he warns, teasing, as he slips a knee between the other man’s legs, warmed by the slight shake of Jack’s shoulders under the covers as he laughs sleepily.

He’s missed this. They both have.

\-------

Leaving Jack in the pre-dawn dark is easily the worst thing he’s done since the fall. Or at least it feels like it.

But he cannot not endure another hour of lying beside Jack and listening to the blood slipping through his veins, slow and syrupy smooth. The warm scent of his life is too much to bear alone while trapped with thoughts that urge him to feed the ache that throbs in his bones. He can’t risk staying-- not while he’s starving like this.

Parting from Jack is a painful untangling of limbs, like tearing himself free and leaving tender threads of roots behind. He worries briefly that his sudden departure will cause some permanent severance, the last shred of sympathy Jack is willing to spare for a devil like him shriveling and dying for good. The warmth under the covers is the closest thing to true comfort that he’s known in at least three years, and the still too-trusting dreamer twitching lazily in the bed beside him is the source of it. Now that he’s tasted this life again, he knows he cannot live apart from it for any meaningful length of time.

He stares at Jack as he sleeps while strapping on his ammo belts and slipping his hooded coat over his shoulders, and still manages to keep up a constant stream of regret that he didn’t feed sooner. He could be lying there beside him, content and full, warmed through by Jack’s bare skin pressed against him. He could have slept in, like he used to, and early-bird Jack would have lingered in bed with him long after sunrise, lazily stroking his eyelids, his nose, his hai-- his _mask_.

 _My mask_ , he reminds himself.

Whatever. The most important things are these, which he considers as he slips into the darkened hallways that wind through the Watchpoint like bowels: Jack still lives. Jack still loves him. Jack doesn’t yet know the depths of his curse. Things aren’t quite as ruined as he’d thought, and there is time to mend what remains.

And Jack will be grateful-- smiling uncertainly, so easily disarmed by gifts and unexpected kindnesses, his cheeks tinted a soft, warm pink, like that very first time when Gabriel gave him a rosary of his own to clutch after exceptionally rough rounds of enhancement therapy-- when Reaper returns to him with his favourite cobalt blue pulse rifle in hand as an offering.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [drowsydragon](http://drowsydragon.tumblr.com/) for inspiring me, headcanoning with me, beta-ing for me, and suffering in Reaper 76 hell with me. <3


End file.
